§ 7. Auxiliary Sciences to Church Law

The science of church law draws its content from its own sources, but according to its nature and subject it stands in connection with other particular sciences, which serve it as auxiliary sciences. To these belong certain theological, historical, and legal sciences.

1. Of the theological sciences[1] the following serve as auxiliary to church law: a) exegesis of the Old and New Testament;[2] b) dogmatics;[3] c) moral theology;[4] d) church history;[5] and e) pastoral theology.[6]

2. Historical sciences: a) archaeology;[7] b) diplomatics;[8] c) chronology;[9] and d) geography and statistics.[10]

3. Legal sciences. If the theological and historical sciences are of great assistance to the science of church law, certain legal sciences, with which it stands in close connection, help it even more, and cause the one who studies it to rightly grasp the significance of that law and to set it forth as an autonomous legal science. Without a thorough knowledge of the relevant legal sciences and a good juridical grounding, it will be possible to occupy oneself with church law only on its practical side, but never on its scholarly side. For this reason, in the first place stands a) the philosophy of law, which acquaints one with the highest principles of law;[11] b) Roman law, with which church law is inseparably bound. Already at the beginning of the Church, when the emperors were not yet Christian, the members of the Church, as Roman citizens, followed the corresponding imperial prescriptions in certain matters. When the Roman emperors subsequently accepted Christianity, Roman, or more precisely Greco-Roman, law gained even greater significance in the Church. In all those legal questions in which the Church did not yet have her own legal prescriptions, she followed the prescriptions of civil law, and on many questions of church life we find in that civil law a multitude of relevant ordinances. Let us open only the Theodosian Code, and there we find a whole book (XVI) that contains the laws: de fide catholica, de episcopis, ecclesiis et clericis, de monachis, de his qui de religione contendunt, de haereticis, ne sanctum baptisma iteretur, de apostatis, de judaeis, coelicolis et samaritanis, de paganis, sacrificiis et templis, de religione. Let us take the Code of Justinian (repetitae praelectionis) and we shall find the whole first thirteen titles of the first book to contain laws exclusively on subjects of the Christian faith and Church: de summa trinitate, de sacrosanctis ecclesiis, de episcopis et clericis et orphanotrophis etc., de episcopali audientia, de haereticis, ne sanctum baptisma iteretur, de apostatis, and so on and so forth. If we take the Novels (novellae constitutiones) of Justinian we shall find many that deal with the very same matters: the third—on the clergy of the church of Constantinople and other churches, the fifth—on monasteries, the sixth—on bishops, presbyters, and deacons, the seventh—on the administration of church property, and so on and so forth. This same thing we find also in the Novels of the emperors after Justinian: Justin, Tiberius, Heraclius, and so forth. And these laws of the state power for the most part entered the canonical collections, becoming, as they used to say, leges canonizatae—and not the lesser half of the Slavonic Kormchaya contains precisely those laws by which the Church was to be governed. These laws were authoritative in all those questions of church administration on which the church authority had not issued a precise law, as many examples from both earlier and later times attest to us. Besides this, church law itself was worked out by the given canonists according to Greco-Roman law. The Roman Institutes (institutiones) served as a model for canonists down to quite recent times. Commentators on the canons drew, in their works, even upon the Pandects (pandectarum seu digestorum libri) of Roman law; and the chief among the Eastern commentators on the canons, Balsamon, turns his attention exclusively, in his work, to the great compilation of Greco-Roman law issued under the name of the Basilica (Basilicorum libri LX). And after this, it seems to us, it is clear how important an auxiliary science Roman law must be for church law.[12] c) Jewish law is likewise of great importance for church law, since many prescriptions of the Mosaic legislation passed over also into the Christian Church, and since the Founder of the Church Himself tells us that He did not come to abolish the old law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17).[13] d) Slavic law can serve as an auxiliary science, at least for church law among the Slavs, insofar as it can clarify certain particularities in the life of the Slavic Orthodox Church that, for instance, the Greek Church does not have.[14] Lastly, e) the law of the individual states in which the Orthodox Church exists.

Besides these sciences, it is absolutely necessary for the study and exposition of church law to have knowledge of languages, especially of medieval Greek.[15]